


Memories of Happy

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Memory, Mourning, Sorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-25 22:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18711037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Owen mourns his lost horse.





	Memories of Happy

**Author's Note:**

> Written in honor of my dear dog Pippy, who recently passed into eternity. I rarely dedicate stories to anyone, but she deserves this one.

Memories of Happy

Owen sat on the cool tin of an upturned feeding pail, staring into the empty stall in the Cavall stables that had once been filled with Happy. The vacancy of the stall echoed the hollowness of his heart in a world without Happy’s restless wickers stirring his hair when he groomed in him or the pounding of Happy’s hooves beneath him as they charged as one beast. The emptiness of the stall felt like a mute tribute to Happy—a tacit recognition of the fact that such a strong, spirited, clever, and bold mount could never be be replaced—even if he knew that the stall would have to be filled again soon. It wasn’t practical to have a vacant stall in a stable that was always crowded with horses, and it hadn’t taken Owen long to realize that everything in Cavall was forever governed by practicality and never by sentiment. 

Straw scattered on the stable floor rustled behind him in the only warning he received before Margarry draped a horse blanket around his shoulders. The rough fabric chafed against the raw edges of his grief and scratched his skin, but he clung to it for comfort anyway, drawing it around his neck like an ugly, misshapen cape. 

“You shouldn’t let me sneak up on you,” Margarry teased, tugging on one of his unruly curls as if her own hair wasn’t locked in a losing struggle to remain in the dark plait that fell past her shoulders. 

“You didn’t sneak up on me.” Owen shook his head, freeing his curl from her toying fingers. “I heard you rustling the straw behind me.” 

“I rustled the straw on purpose.” Margarry’s eye roll could be heard in her voice, Owen thought, imagining her playfully exasperated expression behind him. “I didn’t want you to be startled into a most unmanly scream when I snuck up on you.” 

“You win.” Owen lifted his arms in surrender. He was too tired in body and spirit to argue with a girl who could rival her indomitable father for stubbornness. “You snuck up on me while I was distracted with my own thoughts.” 

Her father, lips thin and cutting blades, would have termed that an explanation an excuse, but Owen was too bone-weary to care about that. 

“You were thinking of Happy, weren’t you?” Margarry’s tone softened, and, as if in sympathy with his flagging spirit, sank onto a hay bale beside him. “He was so handsome I could never find the perfect words to describe him. I loved watching him run, fast, wild, and powerful as the wind.” 

Happy’s magnificent stride had indeed been like the wind, Owen remembered with sword stab to the gut, and to ride him was to feel as if you were flying above the ground. That was why—Owen believed but had never asked—his knightmaster had named the noble steed Windtreader. 

“He was so smart. He understood everything I said.” Owen recalled with the feeling of a noose twisting around his throat how Happy’s eyes had always fixed knowingly upon him whenever he addressed the horse and how the horse’s long features had always shifted in response to his words. “He even had a big, toothy smile. That smile was my favorite of his many expressions.” 

“I know.” Margarry’s head tilted so that it leaned against his, and he breathed in the smell of horse and hay clinging to her like earthy perfume. “That’s why you renamed him Happy.” 

Happy’s big, toothy grin refused to leave Owen’s mind. Tears welled in his eyes, stinging in their saltiness, and behind to leak down his cheeks before he could stop them. He was ashamed to be weeping for Happy again when he had already been guilty of crying more over Happy’s death than over any person’s since his mother’s. 

“I’ve cried more over Happy’s death than I did over the deaths of soldiers and refugees I knew in the war.” Owen swiped the tears away from his face with the back of his hand only to have them replaced by more as river of mourning continued to flow down his cheeks, refusing to be dammed by any sense of shame. “I feel so wicked for that. How could I feel more sorrow over a lost horse than hundreds of lost soldiers and refugees?” 

He had thought that he had seen enough death at the smoldering remains of Giantkiller and Haven that he was becoming numb to it, but then he had shed tears enough to create an ocean when Happy died. That made him worry he was just cold-hearted, caring more for the deaths of animals than people. 

“Our relationships with animals are much simpler—much rawer—than our relationships with people,” murmured Margarry, who would gladly have spent all her days in the stables and kennels. “It’s only natural that our grief for our lost animals should be simpler.” 

“You don’t think I’m cold-hearted then?” Owen attempted a water grin he knew would call attention to the scar on his cheekbone he had earned during a skirmish in Scanra. 

“Of course I don’t think you’re cold-hearted.” Margarry’s assurance was tart, but her brown eyes brimmed with compassion. “You’re one of the most warm-hearted people I’ve ever met.” 

“Even with my dangerous new scar?” Owen jerked a thumb at the scar he had hoped would impart a slightly more intimidating air to his visage. 

“Even with your dangerous new scar.” Margarry laughed, but Owen felt encouraged rather than mocked by it. “You could never be cold-hearted even with your dangerous new scar, and that’s why I like you so much.” 

Owen’s face flamed like a beacon at the conclusion of her comment, and he wondered who had more bizarre ideas about romance—him with his delusion of cultivating a dangerous appearance with his new scar or Margarry with her flattering fantasy that his heart hadn’t been hardened by war? It was a question without an answer similar to the unknown eternal fate of the soul of a noble steed that died bravely in battle behind enemy lines.


End file.
